freeze

Especially of a liquid, to become solid due to low temperature.

The lake froze solid.

1855, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha, Book XX: The Famine, Ever thicker, thicker, thicker / Froze the ice on lake and river,

To lower something's temperature to the point that it freezes or becomes hard.

Don't freeze meat twice.

1888, Elias Lönnrot, John Martin Crawford (translator, from German), The Kalevala, Rune XXX: The Frost-fiend, Freeze the wizard in his vessel, / Freeze to ice the wicked Ahti, ...

To drop to a temperature below zero degrees celsius, where water turns to ice.

It didn't freeze this winter, but last winter was very harsh.

To be affected by extreme cold.

It's freezing in here!

Don't go outside wearing just a t-shirt; you'll freeze!

Of a machine or system, to come to a sudden halt, to stop working (functioning).

Since the last update, the program freezes after a few minutes of use.

A period of intensely cold weather.

In order to work properly, the cotton stripper required that the plant be brown and brittle, as happened after a freeze, so that the cotton bolls could snap off easily.

A halt of a regular operation.

Without a freeze it might be possible to proceed with the production and deployment of such destabilizing systems as the MX, Trident II, cruise missiles and SS-18s, -19s and -20s.

1983 October 3, Ted Kennedy, speech, Truth and Tolerance in America, Critics may oppose the nuclear freeze for what they regard as moral reasons.

The state when either a single computer program, or the whole system ceases to respond to inputs.

A precise draw weight shot where a delivered stone comes to a stand-still against a stationary stone, making it nearly impossible to knock out.

The reason I said the guard wasn't the toughest shot in curling is because, in my book, that's a shot called the freeze. A stone thrown as a freeze comes perfectly to rest directly in front of another stone, without moving it (see Figure 10-5).

A block on pay rises or on the hiring of new employees etc.

a hiring freeze;  a pay freeze

"We need a different understanding of revenues and public expenditure. The 15-year freeze on fuel duty and lack of tax on aviation fuel are effectively a huge subsidy to those forms of travel, but they are not described as subsidy because they are foregone revenue. Yet if you invest to hold rail fares, it's seen as subsidy."

Obsolete form of frieze.

[I]f a plaine fellow well and cleanely apparelled, either in home-ſpun ruſſet or freeze (as the ſeaſon requires) with a five pouch at his girdle, happen to appeare in his ruſticall likenes: there is a Cozen ſaies one, At which word out flies the Taker, and thus giues the onſet vpon my olde Pennyfather.